What have you done every single day for the last five years to improve your business?
I met Brian Gullbrants, EVP and General Manager of Wynn Las Vegas when I was speaking to a group of hotel and restaurant managers in Las Vegas. Brian and I were at dinner the night before my keynote, and he told me something that made my head explode.
Every single day of the past five years, Brian has written to all of his leaders and employees a personal, motivational email to inspire them to seek excellence in their work. It’s a habit he picked up as a general manager for the Ritz-Carlton, where he’d worked for 20 years, just before the Wynn Resorts pulled him onto their team.
Here’s just a small snippet of one of his messages:
“’Never ending attention to detail’ is today’s Wynn Core Value. When you walk into any space here at Wynn or Encore you should immediately be looking at all of the details to ensure that EVERY GUEST will have a great Wynn Experience. So what does that mean? Here’s what YOU should look for: First how does it look? Are all areas clean, spotless, and looking sharp? Is all of the furniture in the right place? Do you need to push in chairs, straighten out lamp shades, adjust signage so it’s straight? It’s all about the guests experience… cleanliness, service, and genuine care! EVERY GUEST… EVERY DAY… in EVERY SPACE.”
He’s done this Every. Single. Day. For five straight years.
And it works. Wynn Las Vegas, in a city crammed with 5-star hotel and casinos, is the pinnacle of excellence in customer service and experience. Of the 150,000 plus rooms that are available in Las Vegas, the Wynn’s are some of the highest rated and most desired by executives around the globe.
Your organization won’t offer highly-rated and highly-desired services and products by happenstance. If you want to live in excellence, you have to create it every day. Do you have a strong enough passion about your product or service to inspire excellence in the people you’re paying to deliver it? If your answer no, then maybe it’s time you found another job.
Leadership isn’t just about telling others what to do — it’s about demonstrating it every single day, like Brian Gullbrants does. What would happen if you exemplified the behavior you wanted to see in your employees? What would happen if you told them exactly what you wanted? I’m not talking about a job description — I’m talking about practical, day-to-day best practices.
If you could sit every single one of your employees down for 5 minutes every day to train them to live in excellence, wouldn’t you do that? If you could save yourself time by making your standards clear organization-wide at the click of a mouse, wouldn’t you do that?
Then why aren’t you?
To change your organization, can you commit to writing an inspirational email to your team once a week?
If you do, I’d call it a Wynn-Win.
Thank you, Brian, for inspiring excellence in so many!
Do you know someone who creates excellence everyday? Hit reply and tell me about that person, or leave a comment in the box below!
*Photo courtesy Xiquinhosilva
As a speaker and author, Curtis Zimmerman has impacted over one million people with his life-changing messages and award-winning programs. Curtis is an expert at transforming organizations by inspiring individuals to live their lives at performance level.
Want to be inspired? Check out his podcast The Next 24 Hours.
